Art Taylor's Blog, page 20

The First Two Pages: “Hunter” by Jen Conley

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

This week continues a series featuring contributors to Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds. Edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimée Osman, the anthology explores the “overall themes of hope and fear during this time of rising anti-Semitism in the US and abroad” as well as “such issues as the Jewish support of the civil rights movement, the enduring legacy of negative stereotypes, the history of prejudice, assimilation, and questions of regional, national, and ethnic identity.” Jeff Markowitz kicked off things last week with an essay focused on character’s names (or lack thereof) in his story “The Black and White Cookie,” and Jen Conley continues to look at names and more with the essay on her story “Hunter” below. Additional contributors to the anthology include Gabriela Alemán, Doug Allyn, Jill D. Block, Craig Faustus Buck, D.M. Evans, Robin Hemley, Ellen Kirschman, Rita Lakin, Joy Mahabir, Zoe Quinton, Eileen Rendahl, Rabbi Ilene Schneider, Terry Shames, A.J. Sidransky, Lizzie Skurnick, E.J. Wagner, Kenneth Wishnia, Steven Wishnia, Xu Xi 許素細, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Yigal Zur.

Jen Conley is well-known and hugely respected in the world of mystery short stories, thanks in large part to her stellar collection Cannibals as well as her stories in the anthologies Trouble in the Heartland and Grand Central Noir and in a variety of magazines and journals, including Pulp Modern, Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Crime Factory, Beat to a Pulp, Out of the Gutter. She has also been an editor for Shotgun Honey, and she’s the author of the YA novel Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, winner of the Anthony Award in 2020. You can find out more about Jen and her work at her website.

In addition to Jeff’s essay and Jen’s, we’ll also be hosting Rabbi Ilene Schneider and Stephen Wishnia over the next two weeks—stays tuned for more!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

Conley-First-Two-Pages

Reading Journal—for Mason Reviewing Course

This fall’s classes at George Mason University include a course in “Reviewing”—one which I originally taught in Spring 2017, and I’m not teaching for the second time, with several alterations.

One assignment I’m preserving is for students to maintain a blog (or equivalent) with a weely reading journal—though I’ve informally told them that it also focus on something besides reading: film, music, video games… nail polish? (That last one came up in discussion.) The goal isn’t to have them produce weekly reviews of the books they’ve reading (or films they’re watching or music they’re listening too) but to put thoughts and reactions and whatever down on paper (pixel) however they see fit. This will, I think (hope), lead them toward greater awareness about how they’re responding to and articulating their thoughts on whatever they’re writing about—a stepping stone toward the more formal reviews they’ll be doing.

(Not all of my writing has so many parentheticals, I should add. (At least I hope not.))

One thing I am doing differently here is keeping my own weekly journal—beginning this week.

So what am I reading lately? At a recent get-together hosted by Kristopher Zgorski and Michael Mueller—both of whom, coincidentally, will be visiting with our class to talk about Kris’s work at BOLO Books—several folks were talking about the mysteries they’d been reading over the summer, book recommendations and those to avoid too, and Tonya Spratt Williams asked me what I’d been reading… a question I dodged a bit by explaining that whenever anyone asks me that question, my mind inevitably goes blank, despite the various piles of books and stories on my desk and nightstand. Usually, all I can remember is what I’ve been reading for classes—reading that takes up the bulk of my time.

But my answer to Tonya was a dodge in other ways—embarrassment a bit that I haven’t been reading much in terms of contemporary mystery this summer. Instead, I’d found my interests going toward philosophy—or at least to books adjacent to philosophy—which was one of my real passions when I was an undergraduate myself.

By “adjacent” to philosophy, I mean that I’ve been reading books about philosophy rather than many of the primary sources themselves. An essay about stoicism by Massimo Pigliucci this summer led me to look up works by Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, for example, but I’ll admit, I enjoyed the essay about them more than the originals—in part because of some of the ways I could see those original texts being misunderstood and misrepresented and leading readers down some fairly nasty paths (think masculinity, think militias; a little Googling will lead you to some discussion on this; I ultimately moved on).

One book I particularly enjoyed—one too long on my TBR list—was Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (which was not, as my wife first thought, a book about cocktails). Part history, part biography, part philosophy, the book was delightful and reawakened some of my own interests in existentialism, leading me back to a a couple of my favorite courses with Yale professor Maurice Natanson (“Philosophy and Literature,” “Philosophy of Existence”) and to one very distinct memory of hurling Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time out the window of our fourth-floor dorm room and into the courtyard; I never went back to retrieve it.

My enjoyment of Bakewell’s book also led me to her previous one: How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. I’m about halfway through that one now, and it’s a joy as well—part history, biography, and philosophy again and also a great reminder of the power and legacy of Montaigne’s work, something I often refer often in teaching the personal essay in another course I teach at Mason on creative nonfiction.

I want to point out to any of my students who might read this that clearly none of the above is “reviewing” really, but just notes on what I’m reading and some quick reactions to it; that’s all I’m asking of you ultimately, though you can go deeper, of course, as I might too. (And do know this is longer than you need to write as well—don’t feel intimidated!)

Other reading this past week:

“The Director’s Notes” by Ted Blain in the December 1995 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Ted and I have been corresponding lately, but I only recently realized that my first appearance in EQMM in this issue was also his first appearance in the magazine too—and his short story is set in a boarding school, which resonates with the novel-eternally-in-progress I’m working on and… It’s a great story with a rich setting and a nice twist or two; I’ve just ordered Ted’s debut novel, Passion Play, as well.

“Publish or Perish” by Smita Harish Jain in the new issue of EQMM—a short tale of scientific discovery, academic ambitions, and greed, with a couple of nice twists of its own.

I’ll plan to keep this up each week for the course—and possibly go into more detail in later posts on some of what I’m reading!

YouTube: Mother, Lover, Killer, Spy

Thanks to the 1455 SummerFest for posting on YouTube the recordings of this year’s virtual panels. I was honored to be on the panel “Mother, Lover, Killer, Spy: Writing Strong and Complex Female Characters” with Kathleen Barber, Alma Katsu, and Tara Laskowski—a fun and informative chat!

You can find our panel here, and all of the panels on 1455’s YouTube page.

The First Two Pages: “The Black and White Cookie” by Jeff Markowitz

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

Almost immediately upon its publication in 2015, Jewish Noir was acclaimed as a landmark anthology, with editor Kenneth Wishnia gathering both historic stories and newly published tales to “explore such issues as the Holocaust and its long-term effects on subsequent generations, anti-Semitism in the mid- and late-twentieth-century United States, and the dark side of the Diaspora (the decline of revolutionary fervor, the passing of generations, the Golden Ghetto, etc.).” One of the contributors to the anthology was B.K. (Bonnie) Stevens, who joined six other contributors in writing essays for a she’d recently introduced, The First Two Pages; those other contributors were Tasha Kaminsky, Michele Lang, Alan Orloff, Travis Richardson, Steve Wishnia, and Dave Zeltserman, and you can find their essays grouped here and here.

Today marks the publication of Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds by PM Press, with Chantelle Aimée Osman joining Ken Wishnia as a co-editor—and what a stellar line-up of contributors this time around as well: Gabriela Alemán, Doug Allyn, Jill D. Block, Craig Faustus Buck, Jen Conley, D.M. Evans, Robin Hemley, Ellen Kirschman, Rita Lakin, Joy Mahabir, Jeff Markowitz, Zoe Quinton, Eileen Rendahl, Rabbi Ilene Schneider, Terry Shames, A.J. Sidransky, Lizzie Skurnick, E.J. Wagner, Kenneth Wishnia, Steven Wishnia, Xu Xi 許素細, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Yigal Zur.

I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of the anthology, and I’m honored to welcome four of the contributors for new First Two Pages essays to celebrate the publication—beginning this week with Jeff Markowitz, who focuses on character’s names in his essay on “The Black and White Cookie” below.

Stay tuned for more essays ahead as well—and congratulations in the meantime to Ken, Chantelle, and everyone involved in this book on another landmark achievement.

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

Markowitz-Jewish-Noir

On Chekhov at the EQMM Blog

At Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine‘s blog Something Is Going to Happen, I wrote about the genesis of my story “We Are All Strangers Here” in the magazine’s September/October issue, which went on sale last week. My essay, “When Strangers Meet,” writes about the connections between Anton Chekhov’s story “In the Cart” and my own new tale—stories linked by George Saunders’ exquisite craft book A Swin in a Pond in the Rain.

Read my essay here.

“We Are All Strangers Here” in EQMM

A woman sipping an Amaretto Sour at a hotel bar during a business convention. A man approaching the stool beside her, asking if the seat is taken. Flirtation ensues, and assessments too—head to toe . . . and in other directions as well . . . though perhaps nothing between them is quite what it seems. 

This is my first story for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in more than three years, and it began in part as an exercise, building on some ideas I got while reading George Saunders’ terrific craft book A Swim in A Pond in the Rain—and specifically his chapter analyzing Anton Chekhov’s “In the Cart.” I’ll be writing more about that soon in a post for EQMM‘s blog “Something Is Going to Happen” scheduled for later this week.

Great to be back at EQMM and in such good company in this issue, alongside stories by friends including Martin Edwards, William Burton McCormick, David Dean, Leigh Perry, Joseph S. Walker, Smita Harish Jain, Twist Phelen, and the late, always great Paul D. Marks—miss him so much.

The First Two Pages: “Becoming Ian Fleming” by Kevin Egan

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

It’s a real pleasure to welcome Kevin Egan to the First Two Pages today with his new story “Becoming Ian Fleming,” just on sale today in the September/October 2022 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Kevin has been a regular contributor to AHMM since 2009—and a contributor as well to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and to other journals and anthologies—and he’s published seven novels too, including most recently three noir-tinged legal thrillers centered on the New York County Courthouse: Midnight, The Missing Piece, and A Shattered Circle, which received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. You can find out more about Kevin and his work at his website.

While Kevin often focuses on the legal world in his short fiction as well (see his previous appearance in AHMM, “The Harbinger,” in the May/June issue), “Becoming Ian Fleming” is a different kind of story, as you’ll see in the essay below. And as you’ll likely notice, the first two pages do not discuss Ian Fleming himself—which I hope will be another enticement for readers to follow up with the full story in the new issue. (And if you’d like a longer sample to get you to Ian Fleming and help seal the deal, AHMM is featuring an excerpt of the story on its website while the issue is on newsstands; you can find that here.)

In the meanwhile, enjoy Kevin’s reflections below.

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

Becoming-Ian-Fleming.First-Two-Pages

The First Two Pages: “Bruised and Battered Nevermore” by Amy Grech

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

I’ve been pleased to host the terrific short story writer Carol Gyzander a couple of times at the First Two Pages, most recently back in April with her Bram Stoker Award-nominated story “The Yellow Room.” (You can find that essay here.) But in addition to her own writing, Gyzander is also a distinguished editor, and today, I’m welcoming a contributor to an anthology Gyzander helped helm: Even in the Grave, co-edited with James Chambers. Amy Grech reached out to me about her story in the collection, “Bruised and Battered Nevermore,” and her essay below offers not only reflections on her story but also a nice introduction to the book on the whole.

Amy Grech is a prolific writer of short fiction, with more than 100 stories in anthologies and magazines: A New York State of Fright, Apex Magazine, Even in the Grave, Gorefest, Hell’s Heart, Hell’s Highway, Hell’s Mall, Microverses, Needle Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, The One That Got Away, Under Her Skin, Yellow Mama, and many others. Find out more about her and her work at her website—https://www.crimsonscreams.com—and connect with her on Twitter too.

And in the meantime, enjoy the essay below!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

The-First-Two-Pages-Amy-Grech

Anthony Award Design Reveal

On Saturday, July 9, Bouchercon hosted the reveal of the new design for the Anthony Award—a design which will be used each year from now on as opposed to having each new Bouchercon design a specific award for their host year. The new design pays homage to Anthony Boucher, writer, critic, and namesake for the convention. I love the pipe and bowtie!

I was pleased to be one of four authors selected as guests for the video presentation, along with Gigi Pandian, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and Louise Penny—good company indeed! And look for cameos by Hilary Davidson, Lori Rader-Day, and Shawn Cosby, and… I’ll have to watch again to make sure I didn’t miss anyone! (You should watch too—here.)

Thanks to Kim Keeline for inviting me to be part of the reveal, to Rae James for hosting the reveal party, and to everyone involved in the new design and announcement.

Bittersweet Endings & Strong, Complex Women

One week, two events—and plenty to talk about!

On Tuesday, July 12, at 3 p.m., I’ll be wrapping up “Short and Sweet,” my four-part webinar series on writing short mystery fiction—this session focused (appropriately) on endings: the challenges of bringing a short story to a satisfying close and some tips on how to overcome those challenges. Toni L.P. Kelner—novelist, award-winning short story writer, and distinguished anthology editor—will be joining me for this session, and we’ll also be talking a bit about the current market for short mystery fiction. This has been such a fun webinar series, and I’m sorry to see it coming to an ending of its own—bittersweet! You can register for that event for free here.

Then on Friday, July 15, I’m honored to be part of the panel “Mother, Lover, Killer, Spy: Writing Strong and Complex Female Characters” alongside a stellar group of authors: Kathleen Barber, Alma Katsu, and Tara Laskowski—and thanks to Tara both for organizing all this and for including me. Here’s the write-up on this panel.

In this roundtable discussion, four award-winning crime fiction writers will discuss how to create complex and interesting female characters. What are reader expectations about women protagonists vs. villains, and how do you avoid stereotypes? What about unreliable narrators and unlikable characters? And do expectations change depending on the genre—domestic suspense, traditional mystery, espionage, horror tale, thriller?

You can register for free for the 1455 Summer Festival here.

Looking forward to all this!